Aikichi Iwamoto, MD, DMSci

Aikichi Iwamoto, MD, is a science and technology advisor of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) founded in April 2015. He retired from the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in March 2015. He headed a research team targeting HIV pathogenicity for 20 years in the Institute of Medical Science of UTokyo (IMSUT). He also took care of people living with HIV in IMSUT’s hospital for 20 years where he served as the director from 2003 to 2006. With his colleagues, he has just opened a new HIV clinic in Shinagawa East Medical Clinic, located at one of a hub station of Metro Tokyo.

Dr. Iwamoto chairs the National HIV Surveillance Committee in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan since 2005. He served as the President of the Japanese Society for AIDS Research (JSAR) from 2005 to 2006 and as the President of the Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases (JAID) from 2009 to 2013. He chaired the 24th Annual Congress of JSAR in 2010, the 87th Annual Congress of JAID in 2013 and the 62nd Annual Congress of the Japanese Society for Virology in 2014.

Internationally, he served as a governing council (Asia and the Pacific islands) of the International AIDS Society from 2006 to 2014, and is a current council of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. From 2009 to 2014, he co-chaired the AIDS panel of the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Sciences Program and co-chairs the whole program since 2013. From 1999 to 2004, he contributed to the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Project for Strengthening of Thai NIH Capabilities for Research and Development on AIDS and Emerging Infectious Diseases. In that project, he contributed as an HIV/AIDS expert and supported the HIV Day Care Center in Lampang Hospital in northern Thailand. From 2005 to 2015, he was the director of IMSUT's Research Center for Asian Infectious Diseases and directed a cooperative research project on emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) between UTokyo and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Supported by the government of Japan and CAS, he co-established Japan-China joint laboratories for EIDs in Institute of Biophysics and Institute of Microbiology in Beijing, together with then Director Dr. Zihe Rao and Dr. George F. Gao, respectively. He was conferred CAS Award for International Science Cooperation (2010), Friendship Award of People’s Republic of China (2011), Overseas Excellent Professor (2011) and International Science and Technology Cooperation Award of the People’s Republic of China (2012). He is an honorary citizen of Guangzhou city since 2012.